


Frown Lines in the Snow

by starstruck1986



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 08:37:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstruck1986/pseuds/starstruck1986
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: 067: Snow<br/>Warnings: Minor character death, themes of grieving, infidelity.  This contains an older partnership than you are used to ages are 40/60.  You've been warned.<br/>Summary: “Your mother was a very kind and generous woman. She raised a very beautiful son. I felt the need to pay my respects.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frown Lines in the Snow

Ron tucked his hands beneath his armpits and clenched his jaw, trying to stop his teeth from chattering.  
  
“She couldn't have fucking kicked the bucket at a warmer time of the year, could she?” he asked at large, his bitterness carrying through the sharp January air.  
“You know Mum,” Charlie breathed. “Always has to be difficult.”  
  
Ron groaned as another shudder rocked his body.  
  
“Here. You need some of this.”  
  
Charlie popped the lit cigarette between Ron's frozen lips for him and held it in place. He gratefully sucked at it and revelled in the nicotine-based comfort he drew into his body. Their mother would have killed them both to see them smoking at a funeral. Smoking at all, in fact.  
  
“Loads of people,” Charlie commented, taking his cigarette back and putting it in his own mouth again.  
“Well, Mum _fed_ a lot of people,” Ron joked.  
  
Charlie gave a small laugh and they fell to silence. Ron stood there, buried in his thick parka which everyone told him was too young for him, willing it to be a bit thicker so that he could stop shivering. Their sense of bravado was something they carried out because if they didn't, they would only stand there crying. The fact that their mother had reached a good age and had a happy life meant nothing in the face of the fact that she was actually _gone_. Ron's throat thickened and he coughed to clear it. Cold air slapped into the back of his throat and he choked.  
  
“God, not you as well,” George said unhelpfully, tramping through the snow towards them. “I fucking hate funerals. It just dredges up unwanted shit, doesn't it?”  
“At least it was warmer when we buried Fred,” Charlie pointed out, flicking his ash away into mid air. “And it was sunny.”  
“And that made it so much better,” Ron muttered sarcastically, finally expelling his pain in a long, low growl from the back of his throat. “Why is it so fucking cold!?”  
“Wash your mouth out,” George snapped.  
  
The uncanny imitation of their mother simply rolled off the man's tongue before he could think about it; all three of them froze. Charlie was the first to snigger, then George, and finally Ron had to give up and laugh into the snow at his feet.  
  
“Having a big family is just... rubbish,” he said lamely, when their laughter had petered out.  
“Why?” Charlie asked curiously.  
“Think about it. I'm the youngest bar Gin. All of you are going to snuff it before me, which means that I'm going to have to go to four funerals if I outlive you all. How depressing is that?”  
“Ouch.” Charlie made a face. “Fair point, Ronniekins.”  
  
At forty, Ron loathed the childhood nickname, but he had long since stopped appealing to his brothers to stop using it. They hadn't listened when he was twenty, so another two decades down the line he had decided to simply save his breath.  
  
“I want fireworks at mine,” George mused, staring up at the sky. “I want a bloody salute in fire lighting up the funeral procession.”  
“Noted,” Ron promised him. “Charlie?”  
“Just chop me up and give me to the dragons,” Charlie said.   
“Ew,” Ron and George said together. “Really?”  
“No, you fucking wankers!” Charlie snorted, stubbing his cigarette out beneath the toe of his boot. “Honestly. I'm not _that_ cracked.”  
“Well, sometimes, I wonder.” Ron shrugged.  
“Oh bollocks, here we go,” George muttered, as the officiator popped out of thin air just beyond the boundary fence of The Burrow, dressed in a thick cloak. “Well. I'll go and...”  
  
He gestured to the crowd and started towards them, his shoulders slumped and his feet dragging.  
  
“Poor George,” Charlie commented quietly.  
“Mm,” Ron agreed. “Twenty odd years and he's still not over it.”  
“Would you be?”  
  
Ron didn't answer; Charlie knew his reply.  
  
“C'mon, mate.” Charlie clapped him on the shoulder. “Let's get this over and done with so we can say ta-ra and get in for a brew.”  
  
It was a false sense of serenity, Ron knew. The day before he had caught Charlie snivelling into the washing up, his big amber eyes reddened with sorrow and his cheeks dripping wet. It was simply that, as one of the older brothers, Charlie felt like he had to be the strong one, to encourage the others to move forward.  
  
Ron knew him better than to believe it.  
  
“Yeah...” He followed, listening to his shoes crunching in the snow.  
“Fuck.” Charlie suddenly stopped. “I didn't know Snape was going to be here.”  
“What?” Ron asked wildly, head snapping up as he searched the crowd for a dark head. “Who invited him?”  
“Ron,” Charlie said gently, “It's a funeral. There's no real invitation system, remember. He's obviously heard and wants to pay his respects.”  
  
Ron bit hard on the inside of his cheek and continued staring. “Where are you looking.”  
“There?”  
  
Following the line of Charlie's finger, Ron saw the man he had avoided for best part of three years.  
  
“You alright?” Charlie whispered.  
“What do you think?” Ron answered dryly, and eager to get as far away from the man as possible, hurried forward into the crowd, so that the whole day might be over that little bit sooner.  
  


~~~

  
  
Ron tapped his tumbler of firewhiskey against his bottom lip and stared across the room into Severus' back. In his mind, several questions were rolling around one another, ranging from 'why the fuck is he here?' to 'should I say something?' to 'is it wrong that I still think he looks good?'  
  
Severus Snape at sixty wasn't much different from when Ron had last seen him properly, at fifty-seven. Of course, the man was far more tidy than on that occasion -he wasn't hurrying away from Ron's house leaving a crying thirty-seven-year-old redhead on the doorstep.  
  
Ron pulled a face as he sipped at his drink. Today, of all days, he really didn't need to be reminded of the past -his past, and the life that he had messed up for himself, and then had messed up for him. By Severus Snape.  
  
There was one notable absence from the proceedings that day. Hermione had neglected to come, just like she had neglected to come to every family occasion since Ron's thirtieth birthday, when their lives changed forever.  
  
He often wondered what had possessed him to kiss Snape on that first night. That kiss had caused him no-end of trouble, but, for seven, blissful years, it had brought him immense happiness.  
  
 _Well, once you got the divorce out of the way and Mum started talking to you again..._ his mind supplied dryly. It hadn't been plain sailing. He had broken up a ten year marriage for another person, and not even a woman – a man. There were times when he didn't think his mother was ever going to forgive him.  
  
His brothers liked to joke that it was his mid-life crisis. That on turning thirty, he had woken up and thought he needed a new 'thing', and had decided to be gay. Because it was just _that_ easy.  
  
In truth, it had been building from his mid-twenties, that dissatisfaction with his sex life and his marriage, and only when he was entering his third decade had the opportunity arisen to do anything about it: with his old potions professor. What started as a torrid affair quickly became more. They were spotted by just about everybody but his wife, until the press got wind and then all hell had broken loose. The divorce was filed for, and the division of the assets was nasty, and in the end Ron even had a few more scars.  
  
At the time, he had thought Hermione unreasonable. However, that morning, as Severus walked away from him three years before, Ron suddenly knew that he had been unfair. He felt like being every bit as spiteful as Hermione had been to him, and as he stood there at his mother's funeral, he felt awful that Hermione had not come to say goodbye, because of him.  
  
Why Severus had decided to leave, Ron had never quite worked out. They had been suffering a rough patch in the relationship, and they were arguing daily. When they made up, however, it was always as sweet and beautiful as before. They would fall into bed, exhausted from fighting, kiss until their lips were near bleeding and then what followed finally knocked them out was even better.  
  
“Bollocks,” he muttered, finally feeling tears welling in his eyes, and, after four doubles of firewhiskey, he felt powerless to stop them.  
  
There was no way that he could fight the emotion which had been fighting to get out since he'd not eaten his breakfast that morning. He sputtered into his glass, pulling it away from his mouth so that he didn't spill anything. Blinking madly, he turned for the nearest exit, desperate to get away from everybody.  
  
He passed through to the kitchen and found a few people sitting at the kitchen table who were not members of his immediate family. He continued out into the cold garden, not stopping for his coat, and was annoyed to find a cluster of smokers around the back door, puffing desperately away. He stamped forth into the darkness, wondering if there was any peace to be found in his childhood home. By that point, his face was swimming with tears.  
  
Coughing, he reached up to wipe them away.  
  
“Fuck and... fuck it all to hell,” he whimpered weakly, stopping when he was in the orchard and shaded from view by the trees.  
  
On hindsight, it was the wrong place to go. The orchard held so many memories of his childhood, of the woman they had buried into the ground that afternoon. Picking apples with her to put in pies, or picking flowers there when he was very young, and blossom from the tree falling in his hair, in her hair, and the general smell of sweetness which pervaded the air.  
  
There was nothing there to comfort him, however, as every ounce of sweetness was buried in snow and the only thing he could smell was the cold. He wished he had stopped for his coat. For warmth he chugged back the last of his whiskey and let it burn his throat. At forty, he had hoped that he might have learnt something along the way about dealing with grief -after all, he and his friends had been treated to the experience so early on in life that they knew all about it. They knew all the phases of grief, they knew about the different moods and feelings which would come with the loss of a friend or a family member, and the knowledge that their loved one would never be coming back.  
  
At forty, it still stung, still made his insides crawl, and that disappointed him.  
  
“Why the fuck did he have to come?” Ron asked the orchard at large, resisting the temptation to fling his empty glass into the dark.  
“I've been asking myself that all afternoon.”  
  
The quiet voice could almost have been imagined, but Ron looked over his shoulder and there he was: Severus Snape. Wrapped in his cloak, wand in hand.  
  
“You're going?” Ron looked at the wand, then up at the man's face.  
“Yes, I didn't feel that I should intrude any further.”  
  
Ron opened his mouth to reply and found that he couldn't.  
  
“I also didn't feel that I could leave without speaking to you.”  
“Why _did_ you come?” Ron croaked.  
  
He bent and set the glass by his feet so that he could wrap his arms around himself to generate some warmth. Severus watched him closely before looking away, concentrating on a tree instead.  
  
“Your mother was a very kind and generous woman. She raised a very beautiful son. I felt the need to pay my respects.”  
“You could have warned me.”  
“Would you have ever opened the letter?”  
“Yes.” Ron nodded. “Severus, I've waited for three years for word from you. Of course I would have opened your fucking letter!”  
  
He heard his voice heighten with his emotions and Ron stopped and tried to check himself. He coughed and looked down at his shoes.  
  
“Ron... do you really think I would come here today if I didn't want to see _you?_ ”  
“But why would you want to do that? You left me, Severus, and you didn't look back. You didn't even give me a bloody explanation and now you turn up here, on the day of my _mother's funeral?!_ ”  
“Believe me, I know what that makes me.” Severus held up a hand. “I know, Ron, I know. But do you know what I did when I heard the news?”  
“Wrote a bloody poem?” Ron suggested irritably.  
“I sat down, and I put my face in my hands and I cried. For you. Because I damn well know what this will do to you, and how you'll be feeling, and like I have every day since I left, I regretted leaving you.”  
  
Thrown off his guard, Ron blinked at the wizard in front of him.  
  
“You cried for me?” he asked softly, wondering if his ears were playing up.  
  
Not once in seven years had he seen his partner cry. Not that he himself had blubbed at every possible opportunity, but he allowed his emotions to come out in other ways.  
  
“I felt for you,” Severus said. “There's nothing more honest I can say than that.”  
“And you regret leaving?” Ron clarified.  
“Who wouldn't?”  
“Then why didn't you come back?”  
  
Ron watched as Severus' throat bobbed, presumably with nerves.  
  
“Pride. Fear. I hoped you might move on and find somebody that you deserved and who made you happy.”  
“You fucking made me happy!” Ron cried, throwing his hands wide. “Then one morning I woke up and you told me that you were leaving me. That I'd ripped apart my entire life for a man who then decided to walk away. How can you say now that you regret it?”  
“I don't expect you to forgive me. I'm not asking you to.”  
  
Ron said nothing. He wasn't going to say he couldn't, because deep in his chest he knew that he could. Against his better judgement or not, he had never stopped loving the man in front of him in the snow.  
  
“Severus, just tell me. Why did you leave? All I've ever wanted, if you wouldn't come back, was answers.”  
“Tonight isn't the night for it.”  
“What better time is there?” Ron laughed. “You can't break me any further, Severus. I've just buried my mother. I'm low. I'm down. Kick me with the bad news. I won't hold it against you. Please... just tell me why you woke up and left me.”  
  
“We should go somewhere warmer.”  
“Severus, I don't give a shit if my dick falls off, just tell me. Or leave.”  
  
The man's weight shifted uncomfortably between his feet, which he was looking at. Ron thought how odd that was, to see the great Potions Master looking so humbled.  
  
“The arguing got to me, and... I just rolled over that morning and in your sleep, you were frowning. There were lines on your face and your body was all tensed up... and I knew I was the cause of that.”  
“So...”  
“I left because I didn't want to ruin your life any more than I already had.”  
  
Ron blinked. “That's the most pathetic thing I've ever heard,” he breathed.  
“What?”  
“I thought you left because you hated my guts,” Ron laughed. “I thought that you'd fallen out of love with me, or that you thought I was having an affair because, hey, I had an affair with _you_ , right? Once a cheater always a cheater, like my dear old mum said.”  
  
He found himself laughing harder, the effort shaking his chest. He turned and put his palms on the bark of the nearest tree and leant into it, still laughing wildly to himself, shaking his head.  
  
“I can't believe...” he choked and laughed again. “I can't believe I waited three years... for that! Severus, you're... unbelievable.”  
“It's the truth, whether you think it's funny or not,” Severus said coldly. “I was terrified that you were _my_ mid-life crisis, and that I was going to ruin you chasing something I had no right to chase.”  
“You did that anyway.”  
“Well, I didn't say it was an intelligent idea, and especially not a good one, Ron.”  
  
Finally, his mirth deserted him, and Ron let his head hang down between his arms and stared at the snow drifts at the base of the tree.  
  
“Three years of hell and being laughed at for that miserable excuse of an excuse,” he said.  
“I know.”  
“And you picked today to show up... I've hung around your favourite haunts for three years hoping to run into you and now...”  
  
Silence stretched between them as they stood there. Ron listened to the sound of his own breath for something to do. He ached all over from the way he had held himself tightly all day, barely breathing in the cold air. He was tired despite the drug-induced sleep he'd achieved the night before. Most of all he was sick to the stomach with himself, because he knew that, if Severus laid one finger on him, he would melt into the man's touch, and the past three years of pain would be nothing, because Severus would be back, and he would be whole again.  
  
“I know I have humiliated you.”  
  
Severus' voice was much closer than before. Ron held his breath.  
  
“I know I made you look like a fool, that you threw everything away for a man who did nothing but leave you.”  
  
The soft press of Severus' hand to the small of Ron's back was a surge of energy into his body, one which fizzled through his veins and caused heat to flare in his cheeks. He was so cold that the sudden warmth stung and made him dizzy.  
  
“Your news made me realise something else,” Severus whispered. “That I would be an even worse person if I were to allow you to go through this alone.”  
  
Warm arms embraced Ron from behind and he gasped, squeezing his eyes shut and remaining deadly still. Severus kissed the side of his face.  
  
“If you'll have me, of course. I understand if the three years have given you perspective, and sense. You should reject me now.”  
“Severus.”  
  
Unable to hold back, Ron felt the last of his strength dissolve in his belly.  
  
“Severus, get me out of here. Get me away. Please. I can't be here and look at her things any more. Please.”  
“Okay.”  
“And I've got loads of frown lines now.”  
“I don't care.”  
  
The crack of apparition sounded through the Orchard.  
  
 _-fin-_


End file.
